Your Man Around Town

November 21, 2018

“Somewhere out on that horizon

Out beyond the neon lights

I know there must be something better

But there’s nowhere else in sight.” –

Eagles in the City – Joe Walsh!

It was a warm September evening in 2012 and my wife and I were hosting the Park & Recreation Citizen Advisory Committee for dinner at our home. Pam Frisella, the City Council liaison and my friend, pulled me aside and said that I should consider a run for City Council next year as she is leaving her seat after eight years. “Who me?” I said.  Well, the rest is – as they say history! Or at least 5 years as a Councilmember!

On December 10 at 6:30 pm, I will sit on the dais and reply, “here” when we take roll call for my last time as your City Councilmember, a day I am looking forward to for many reasons. While bitter sweet, I will be getting to do what I love most, spend time with my family! In case you did not know, I am a person who loves to give back to my community. Whether it’s in my business, my temple, my kids’ schools or Foster City.  My future endeavors will surely find a way to get involved and give back. My father taught me at an early age that, “it’s better to give than to receive!” Thank you Dad! I have passed that motto onto my kids and hope they too someday will do the same to their kids!

While I attended an election evening party a few weeks back for one of our newest council members, Sanjay Gehani, many people greeted me and thanked me for my service to Foster City. I, of course, thanked them for allowing me to represent them. A question I got often that night was do you have any regrets for not running for a second term? Absolutely NONE! I was able to be a servant of the community and try with my fellow colleagues to collaborate as a team on policy directives that would provide everyone with a safe and sound City, while allowing us to all enjoy the many great attributes Foster City has to offer.

As I close a chapter in my life and reflect on what we did and who I had the great pleasure of working on with fellow councilmembers Art Kiesel, Steve Okamoto, Herb Perez, Sam Hindi, Charlie Bronitsky and Catherine Mahanpour, the result is a balanced budget while growing our General Fund reserves, increasing our park system by adding two new parks (Shoreview and Bridgeview), installation of turf fields to allow for more people to use the fields and enjoy the outdoors, the creation of a master bicycle and pedestrian plan that now includes new bike lanes and sharrows throughout our City, a new two-sided marquee to feature more of our community events for us to all enjoy, and a no-smoking policy that other cities are using as an example to help in reducing second hand smoke for the betterment of our lives.

I am very proud of my policy votes on housing, while some of you may read this as NIMBY (not in my backyard). Hopefully, you respect that I believe in community and the building community is not sitting still, it is looking forward, providing a city for people to live in and create their own community for generations to come. For me. I want a place where my kids might one day live. Who would not want that?  To the new City Council starting December 10 – before you say YES or NO to a project – remember this if nothing else. You now represent ALL FOSTER CITY, ALL THIRTY THREE THOUSAND. Build community as the one pillar we can all live with!

To the staff who I had the pleasure to work side by side with, thank you for making me a better Councilmember. You taught me how government works and how to create good policy that benefits the greater number of people. Your guidance and support will always be my gift that I cherish. You are more to me than staff, you are partners and friends!

The next few years in Foster City will be somewhat challenging. As our City gets closer to its golden birthday of fifty years old and begins to feel the aches and pains of the beginning of older age, we need to start taking care of our infrastructure, park system, and the Recreation Center, while adapting to the next generation of Foster City residents and meeting the needs of the entire community. But nothing is as important as our levee. Together, as a community, we can accomplish this and much more. Our City has resources available, but they are limited, and we need to plan and prioritize for sustaining future generations.

In closing, many of you like to say that YOUR QUALITY OF LIFE is most important.  I could not agree more. However, like I have said many times before and will continue to say for years, each of us has a different definition of quality of life. Therefore, I urge us all to not always say, that this or that affect OUR quality of life! We are all individuals with a unique perspective on what we consider a quality of life.  We, as Councilmembers, do our best to represent the entire community’s quality of life.

I thank you, Foster City for allowing me to watch over OUR city for the past five years and hope you found me to be a good keeper of OUR quality of life.

Your man around town will be just that …